Angela Merkel's CDU has emerged as the biggest party in the Bundeswahl, tainted however by a collapsing vote share and the rise of Alternative for Germany (AfD). Experts have told Sputnik she may not have many days as Chancellor left as a result, while the AfD may prove of service to German political culture.

A German court on Wednesday sentenced a Syrian refugee to three-and-a-half years in prison over the kidnapping of a UN peacekeeper, finding him guilty of complicity in a war crime.

Twenty-six-year-old Suliman al-S. was arrested in January 2016, becoming the first asylum seeker in Germany to face charges over alleged war crimes committed in Syria.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended an election campaign that left her conservative bloc in first place but significantly weakened as she embarked Monday on what could be a lengthy quest to form a new government.

Merkel said the success of a nationalist, anti-migrant party that finished third in Sunday’s election won’t influence her foreign, European and refugee policies. She once more defended her decision to let in large numbers of migrants, saying Germany wouldn’t again face the humanitarian crisis that let to it.

Almost half of the individuals suspected of a recorded crime in Berlin last year were individuals who don’t have a German passport, the latest police statistics show.

The main result of these elections is undoubtedly the relative failure of the three major parties, the Christian Democratic Union, Christian Social Union, and Social Democratic Party. The 2017 parliamentary elections are the worst in history for the oldest German party, the Social Democratic Party, and for CDU/CSU the smallest margin since 1949. Although the CDU/CSU bloc has kept its position in parliament as the biggest faction, its leader, Angela Merkel, has not hid her disappointment, admitting that she hoped for a better outcome for her bloc.

Hundreds of anti-fascist activists (Antifa) gathered in Berlin on Sunday to protest the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party’s gains in the parliamentary elections, with crowds chanting “Go away,” “Nazi pigs,” and “Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here.”

WILLIAM Hague has called the Alternative for Germany (AfD) shock election results "a wake up call to a complacent Europe" and warned the bloc's super powers now had to think seriously about how to tackle immigration.

The rise of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) dominates the headlines, but the most significant outcome of the German election is that Angela Merkel’s days as Chancellor are probably numbered. This has grave implications for Europe and the wider world.

Germany’s new Nazis see Israel as role model

THE pound jumped against the euro, after the German Election resulted in Chancellor Angela Merkel losing vote share to far right party AfP.

The current election result is a turning point for Germany. The far-right populist AfD has entered parliament for the first time, and Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken a hit, says DW Editor-in-Chief Ines Pohl.

Angela Merkel will serve as Germany's chancellor for a fourth term, but Sunday's win comes at a high price. The right-wing populists are now the third-strongest party in parliament and her negotiations to create a new government are likely to be complicated.

Preliminary results of the German parliamentary election are revealed.

Merkel’s CDU/CSU union is currently in the lead, while it seems that the right-wing opposition party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) will move as the third strongest party into Bundestag.

For the grand CDU/SPD coalition, the results are rather disappointing.

The CDU leader was victorious according to exit polls but the result was tempered by Alternative for Germany, the right-wing populist party, winning its first seats in the Bundestag.

She told supporters: "Obviously we hav a new challenge ahead of us and that's the presence of the AfD in the German parliament.

"We will carefully analyse the results because we want to win AfD voters back by looking at their concerns and especially by making good policies."

A poll published by public broadcaster ZDF on Friday shows that both the major parties are likely to suffer major losses, while the small right-wing parties are on the rise.

The ZDF Politikbarometer poll shows Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) on 36 percent support, with the Social Democrats (SPD) on a miserable 21.5 percent.

Germany’s two largest parties have been united in a “grand coalition” since 2013, a fact which appears to have led to an erosion in support for both of them.

With so many voters apparently still undecided about who to pick on Sunday, parties have taken to advertizing in several languages, desperate for every vote they can get.

When readers in Germany opened their newspapers earlier this month, they likely weren't surprised to see a full-page campaign advertisement from Chancellor Angela Merkel. The country’s Bundestag elections are, after all, this Sunday.

But if most Germans had started to read the advert, they would have found the text unintelligible. Merkel’s message to voters was written in Turkish, and was printed in Öztürk – a monthly newspaper for Turkish Germans.

A senior official of the Alternative for Germany party told Sputnik that Germany should leave the European Union and improve its ties with Russia.

That last sentence is very cryptic. I do not know what they mean. Do they mean to say that most who will vote in Berlin, will vote for others such as AfD? There’s no explanation for this, and comments are disabled on the original video.

Two days before German federal elections, Angela Merkel, who is going for a fourth term as Chancellor, found her closing campaign rally in Munich crashed by right-wing protesters, who booed and heckled her for half an hour as she made her speech.

The loud heckling and whistling was audible on RT Ruptly’s live feed from the Friday rally even before Merkel began to speak, and the organizers eventually had to raise the mic’s volume. This did not prevent the German leader from giving her prepared 30-minute speech, but she added an improvised detail as an opening remark to her opponents.

“With whistling and yelling, one will surely not shape Germany’s future,” Merkel told the protesters on the last day election campaigning is allowed to take place.

German party Alternative for Germany (AfD) intends, once elected to the Bundestag, to launch a parliamentary commission to investigate decision of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to open borders in 2015, without seeking approval from the parliament, a party candidate to the Bundestag in the forthcoming election, Waldemar Birkle, confirmed to Sputnik on Friday.

"Merkel violated the law. This decision [on the opening of the borders] should have been taken by the Bundestag. And this did not happen," Birkle said.

As the clock ticks down to elections Sunday, Germany's cyber defence nervously hopes it'll be third time lucky after Russia was accused of meddling in the US and French votes.

But even if Berlin avoids a last-minute bombshell of leaks or online sabotage, it sees Moscow's hand in fanning fears of Muslim migrants that are driving the rise of the hard-right.

Four days ahead of the parliamentary election, posters can be seen in the center of Berlin, and not far from Reichstag.

There would be nothing unusual about these posters, if it wasn’t for the photo of the Russian President Vladimir Putin and the text that reads “Vote Putin for Chancellor” right below it.

The posters, which are designed in the style of those used in the CDU’s election campaign, shine a light on the huge gap between the policies of the German government and the actual public opinion on Russia.

EXCLUSIVE: Angela Merkel’s immigration policy has been savaged as the cause of Brexit in a scathing interview with the politician who hopes to steal her seat in the German election.

Hello Jeff - Here is the proof that the co infection of Relapse Fever/Malaria came to Germany via Afghanistan. REFUGEE Transmitted Disease. What more can we say. Refugees are not screened for health by UN. Germany is terribly infected country with everything from TB to Malaria, to Typhus and Malaria co infection Typhus. etc etc.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel has warned that any US move to scrap Iran's nuclear deal would discourage other countries from going to the negotiating table to discuss their nuclear activities.

A collapse of the accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), would send a “terrible signal” for other diplomatic efforts, Gabriel said on the sidelines of a UN meeting in New York on Thursday.

“What should motivate countries like North Korea or others to enter into negotiations in the future when the one example of such a deal is being destroyed?” he asked.

Germany will do all it can to persuade the United States not to abandon the Iranian nuclear agreement, whatever the outcome of German elections on Sunday, Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Thursday.

Gabriel told reporters any US move to cancel the Iran deal and impose new sanctions on Tehran would discourage powers such as North Korea from negotiating an end to their own nuclear programmes.

Germany would work with the European Union, France, Britain and where possible China and Russia to press Washington to preserve the deal, under which Iran curbed its nuclear work in exchange for the lifting of sanctions, he said on the sidelines of a UN meeting in New York.

German federal elections are Sunday, September 24. The most likely outcome of the election is another “Grand Coalition” but it will be a much-weakened coalition. And If that coalition forms again, the rightwing AfD party is poised to become the largest opposition party.

A 16-year-old girl was raped by two Afghan men near a refugee camp in Bavaria, according to German police. A third one was prevented from sexually abusing the girl by a passerby.

According to a police statement, the teenager had gathered with a large group of people outside a refugee center in the upper Bavaria municipality of Höhenkirchen-Siegertsbrunn, located south of Munich.

As the German federal election is approaching, there is a sharp increase in attacks on Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and its supporters.

The right-wing party is mostly being targeted due to its staunch opposition to Merkel's immigration policies.

On Saturday, around a dozen of camouflaged persons attacked a group of AfD campaigners in the German city of Rostock.

A 4-member campaign team that was promoting the local candidate Stephan Schmidt, was trying to put on posters, when it was attacked by five darkly dressed and partly hooded assailants that were carrying stones.

German companies working in Russia have unanimously rejected the new anti-Russian sanctions law adopted by the US last month, a survey by the German-Russian Chamber of Commerce (GRCC) has found.

ANGELA Merkel is facing a populist surge ahead of next week’s German elections which could place Alternative for Germany (AfD) members in government.

FEDERALIST dreams of a more deeply integrated eurozone stand on a knife-edge this week as eurocrats nervously await the outcome of a German election which could determine the future of the bloc.

Four asylum seekers have been arrested by police in Dessau, Germany after being suspected of gang raping a 56-year-old woman on the grounds of a former vocational school last month.

The attack occurred last month on August 16th, according to the victim, who said she was assaulted by four men she described as having a dark skin colour. This week police arrested four men between the ages of 18 and 21, all from Eritrea, in the German regions of in Saxony-Anhalt, Baden-Wurttemberg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Mittledeutsche Zeitung reports.

ANGELA Merkel is facing a populist surge ahead of next week’s German elections which could place Alternative for Germany (AfD) members in government.

A group of 51 migrants, including 17 children, has been found crammed in a truck heading to Berlin, German federal police say. The exhausted migrants were taken for questioning, while the Turkish driver was arrested for alleged human trafficking.
Early Saturday, police said they pulled over a truck with Turkish license plates on federal highway A12 near the town of Muellrose, not far from the Polish border, revealing “a shocking picture,”according to Der Spiegel. 20 men, 14 women, 10 boys and seven girls were squeezed inside the vehicle. According to the police report, these were several families of Iraqi origin.

The German government has opened a probe into an illegal Pentagon arms trafficking operation after a bombshell investigative report on the secret program went viral this week.

On Wednesday we reported on the continuing Pentagon arms pipeline to Syria which runs through Europe, the Balkans, and Caucuses, and which is based on a shady network of private contractors and altered US government paperwork. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) produced conclusive evidence and internal memos proving that not only is the Pentagon currently involved in shipping up to $2.2 billion worth of (mostly old Soviet) weapons from private dealers to US-backed Syrian militants, but is actually manipulating paperwork such as end-user certificates in order to conceal the ultimate destinations of the weaponry (in this case Syria).

Chancellor Angela Merkel may appear to be cruising to a victory in next week's elections, but her campaign rallies across Germany have been plagued by rowdy protesters who have been jeering, booing and even flinging tomatoes at her.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says any UN peacekeepers that may be deployed to eastern Ukraine under a proposal by Russian President Vladimir Putin must be allowed access to all areas held by pro-Moscow forces.

Germany's Federal Chanceller thinks it does not create the grounds for easing the sanctions against Russia

Washington's air base in southwest Germany was used for a time to store and send weapons to Syrian rebels, according to a German news daily. If the report proves true, the US could have violated German law.

Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine has questioned why its Foreign Minister granted an interview to RT. Sigmar Gabriel explained that German politicians should be able to give interviews to other media and not “only our established” outlets.

Gabriel who is a member of the left-leaning SPD party, discussed among other issues, Russian-German relations, the crisis in Ukraine and the question of Crimean and Catalonian self-determination during the interview with RT German last week.

The culture behind fiscal orthodoxy has enabled German business to hold down its costs, and persuade the German workforce that restraint for them is the right policy

The press service of the German news weekly Focus said the magazine had no intention to insult Russian President Vladimir Putin by calling him a "dog," with the editors claiming that the author used "an ironic quibble" that has no adequate translation in Russian, Deutsche Welle reported, referring to the magazine's press secretary, Alice Wagner.

A nationalist party that wants Germany to close its borders to migrants, leave Europe’s common currency and end sanctions against Russia is predicted to enter Parliament for the first time this month, propelled by voters’ anger at Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to let over a million refugees into the country since 2015.

ANGELA Merkel has threatened Hungary with expulsion form the EU over its refusal to adhere to Brussels' refugee allocation scheme.

ANGELA Merkel was shamed on the campaign trail by a young nurse who called for a massive overhaul of Germany's care system in an embarrassing blow to the German Chancellor.

Brexit is already damaging Germany’s trade with the UK and it is set to get worse, according to the Association of German Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

But new research from the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW) has now revealed the drastic extent to which Germany could face economic disaster following Brexit.

According to the study, many German manufacturers are dependent on the production of goods abroad – with many partners being based in Britain.

In 2014 alone, the British supplied intermediate goods worth EUR 200 billion to the EU, of which 36 billion went to Germany.

Despite receiving thousands of asylum-seekers annually, Germany has been safeguarded by its geographic location and the Dublin agreement (which regulates asylum procedures in the EU), which left most refugees stranded in the EU’s coastal states, such as Greece and Italy. Berlin, however, began facing a new reality two years ago. As the migrant influx into Europe from the Middle East and North Africa gained momentum, the German chancellor announced a “humanitarian move,” opening Germany’s borders to migrants in August 2015.

The co-chair of the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has been widely condemned after the publication of an allegedly leaked email, in which she reportedly calls the German Chancellor a “pig tasked with keeping Germany down”.

Just weeks before the German parliamentary elections, Alice Weidel, who is also one of the two leading candidates from her party, found herself at the center of a high-profile political storm after the Die Welt daily published the email, in which she allegedly cynically questioned German sovereignty and accused the German government of deliberately instigating a civil war.

“These pigs are nothing other than puppets of the WWII Allied Powers tasked with keeping the German people down by instigating civil wars in the metropolitan areas by flooding them with foreigners,” Weidel allegedly wrote in an email to a confidant, referring to Angela Merkel and her government, as reported by Die Welt.

According to police, those involved in the brawl were Afghan and Syrian citizens. Police made eight arrests.

Psychologist Stephan Grünewald has spent much of his career studying Germans. In a new study, he looked at current political attitudes and discovered raw emotions ahead of the upcoming election.

Two years ago, Russian hackers conducted a cyberattack against the German parliament. Will the data they stole make a sudden appearance before the election? Officials are doubtful, but there may be an even greater threat.

When German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel lands in Beijing Tuesday for talks with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and other officials, he is set to deliver a one-two-three punch: Open your market for German investors, keep your government out of our businesses — and don’t mess with your closest European trading partner.

What happened last Sunday during the so called “Chancellor-Duel” between the CDU chancellor and the Social Democratic challenger Schulz makes me speechless. In fact, the Social Democratic candidate just negatively focussed on Turks and Palestinians.

ANGEL Merkel's car was again pelted with tomatoes when angry crowds confronted her as she arrived for an election rally.

The 24-year-old, who is the national spokesman for the Left Party’s youth wing, made the post this week which led to a backlash after another user captured a screenshot of the post. That user then sent the screenshot to the Left Party who commented: “Sarah Rambatz will resign from her place on the Hamburg list due to this incident. The Left stands for dignified politics,” MOPO reports.

Over 70 percent of respondents in a poll conducted in Germany say their prime concern is terrorism. The findings come as Europe reels from a string of violent attacks for which the the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorist group claimed responsibility in most cases.

There has been growing scrutiny over Angela Merkel’s nation’s trade surplus, which has provoked anger from the United States’ president, but the balance sheet for 2017 will add fuel to that fire.

Over the course of the year Germany will sell more across its borders than even they expected with reports claiming exports have hit a “breathtaking rate since the financial and economic crisis”.

While firms, employees and the treasury have all seen the benefit, anger is growing from trading partners over the burgeoning account surplus.

Germany said on Thursday that Russia was planning to send more than 100,000 troops to war games on NATO’s eastern flank this month, disputing Moscow’s version that only 13,000 Russian and Belarussian servicemen would participate.

The Sept. 14-20 exercises known as Zapad, or “West” in Belarus, the Baltic Sea, western Russia and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, are stirring unease in NATO despite Moscow’s assurances troops would rehearse a purely defensive scenario.

“It is undisputed that we are seeing a demonstration of capabilities and power of the Russians,” German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen told reporters at an EU defense ministers’ meeting in Tallinn.

“Anyone who doubts that only has to look at the high numbers of participating forces in the Zapad exercise: more than one hundred thousand,” she said in a joint news conference with her French counterpart Florence Parly.

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel – pelted with tomatoes at the start of the week – faced another angry crowd on Wednesday which branded her a "traitor".